Some Things Last A Long Time
by Akingdomofunicorns
Summary: The smirk is new, he hasn't really looked at her once since she started coming to the shop; the handwriting, not so much, he has been misspelling her name on purpose since the very first time.


**Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me, except the mistakes and possible mischaracterizations.**

* * *

"Rizzo? Really?"

The boy smiles, crooked and flirty in a way that would have made her blush, had she been fifteen. But she isn't, she's twenty-two, and he's kind of annoying. She brushes off his stupid confidence aside, takes the polyester cup from his hands and leaves for her next class.

The smirk is new, he hasn't really looked at her once since she started coming to the shop; the handwriting, not so much, he has been misspelling her name on purpose since the very first time. She forgets all about him, though, the moment she takes a sit beside Rebecca, who shows her the newest cat video she's found on the internet with a heart melting smile on her face.

* * *

"Riza Hawkeye," she enunciates clearly, making sure to never break eye contact.

The barista, this Roy guy with the flirty smirk, grabs the cup from the counter, turns and writes something with the black sharpie he always wears on his breast pocket. She waits quietly. The money she's left on the counter sits flat and green beside the sugar packets and he's standing there, his white shirt taut over his broad shoulders, the jet black of his hair broken in half by a white stripe of light. He's handsome, she knows, in a boyish kind of way.

The cup he gives her reads _Rice Hockey_. She should throw the coffee at him. She _should_.

She leaves without waiting for the change.

* * *

She sees him smoking on the quad, lounging with another boy his age. He's laughing as he smokes. She likes that, he looks like a fresh drop of water pierced by sunlight.

She supposes he knows she's looking at him. She's sure he's looked her way more than once, and she should probably go to her next class before she has to rush there, but she can't tear her eyes away from the curve of his mouth andthe Adam's apple at his throat.

* * *

 _Reetza_.

She leaves a button as a tip.

* * *

"You know my name," she tells him. She might be pouting, she's not sure.

It's dark at Breda's house and there's a ring of fire in Roy Mustang's eyes. It's been a long time since they've been alone in a library, but they were children back then, and they're adults now. Adults with a past in common, with childhoods interwoven together in sunlit chambers and a lake at the back of the house. She had been a gangly teen with a round face back then, and Roy had been her Father's apprentice. Forbidden territory.

"Do I?"

He's a stupid boy she should have forgotten all about. A stupid, stupid boy who used to kiss her under the cherry blossoms of her Father's property, who'd tuck her hair behind her ear and call her Blondie just to make her laugh. Blondie was a stupid nickname anyway. She didn't know why she was so adamant on making him recognize her, but she was, and his cavalier attitude was pissing her off.

"Forget it."

She turns around, ready to find a nice spot where to curl and wait for Rebecca to drag her back to the party. She's not in the mood anymore to deal with the drunks and the idiots, and Rebecca's fiery persona exhausts her when the girl is in her cups. There are goosebumps on her arms, and the tattoo on her back burns under his stare, and she's lonely. Lonely like she used to be as a child, pressured by the darkness around her, the music so loud and so far away at the same time, the smell of old books making time spin.

"You wear your hair long, now. It's cute."

She feels his fingers ghost at the nape of her neck, but the feeling is gone so soon that she wonders if it was just her overworked brain remembering those times they used to hide in the library while her Father slaved away in his study, while Roy explored the crevices of her body under the soft light coming through the windows. She was so shy back then, and he made her laugh.

If he hadn't left (if her Father hadn't kicked him out), would they have married, like the girls back in town did with their high school sweethearts? Roy didn't seem like the type, but they had been children back then, and they hadn't really left their sheltered provincial lives.

"Shut up."

There's a moment of silence after she says that, and then Roy laughs and leaves her there, frozen in the past, lost in a forgotten childhood that she's not sure she ever had.

* * *

She avoids the coffee shop like the plague for the next week, always bringing her coffee from home, never stopping too long outside the university building in case she sees him there smoking like a chimney, laughing like a god.

She misses him. It's so stupid, really, that he can have any effect on her after so many years, but it's no surprise. She's never been able to scrub the feeling of his tongue off her skin.

* * *

The envelope sits on Rebecca's desk, an obscene yellow thing that glares at her. It has her name on it, a _Riza Hawkeye_ written in a cursive she knows well. She should probably burn it to a crisp, but her hard edges softened long ago.

"Someone gave this to Havoc, who gave it to Breda, who gave it to me. Can you guess who sends this to you? Do you have a little admirer?"

She just wants the envelope, the connection.

"I'm not gonna make you suffer anymore, you look about to have a stroke. Or about to tear my throat open. Did you know sometimes you look at people like you want to kill them? You're scary."

Rebecca laughs, the professor hasn't arrived yet. Have they always been so old, so young, so soft? They look lost, and innocent, fresh-faced with freckles on their nose and doe-eyed like schoolgirls fresh from junior high. Did they ever grow up?

There's a coupon inside the envelope, with a red heart drawn in sharpie in one corner.

What a stupid, stupid boy.

* * *

"And a _pain au chocolat_ , on the house. I love saying _pain au chocolat_ , it makes me sound worldly."

He's smiling, not smirking, when he gives her the polyester cup filled to the brim with coffee and condensed milk (she's feeling fancy), and there's _Blondie_ written in black cursive, so familiar, so sweet, the _i_ topped with a small, dainty heart so uncharacteristic of Roy Mustang that it makes her smile.

"Seven o'clock," she tells him before she can cower before his insistent gaze, "at Gluttony's Bistro. We have a lot to catch up on."

"Good Lord, it took you long enough to ask. Where you expecting for me to do all the hard work?"

The smirk —the one from their childhood, the cocky assured one that appeared on his face anytime he convinced her to let him kiss her— is back. She turns around, coffee and bun in hand. There must be feathers tied at her back, and the next man in line is smiling at her, almost smug in his delight. She feels the tattoo on her back burning under his stare.


End file.
